EC pushes for political financing law amid RM2.6b donation controversy

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 6 — The Election Commission (EC) has called for legislation that requires all political parties to declare their sources of funding to make elections more transparent, amid controversy surrounding the RM2.6 billion that was said to be donated to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s account.

EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Yusof pointed out that the election agency does not have any investigative powers to find out if election candidates spend more than the limits of RM200,000 for parliamentary seats and RM100,000 for state seats, as they only rely on receipts submitted by the candidates.

“There must be a law on how much you get from anybody and the like,” Aziz told Malay Mail Online when contacted, noting that the US and UK have such political financing laws.

“Political parties must agree to reveal who are the donors, how much they get, local or overseas… I was told, there was a proposal on that, but one political party disagreed,” he added, declining to reveal which political party it was.

Aziz said the EC would report to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and to the police if it received complaints with supporting evidence that an election candidate had spent more than what was reported to the EC.

Najib said Saturday that he would only reveal the source of Barisan Nasional’s (BN) funds if the opposition was willing to do the same, amid allegations that public money had been used to fund the ruling coalition’s election campaigns.

The BN chairman and Umno president also said he will be pushing for a motion in Parliament to ensure transparency in political funding.

Three years ago, Najib had said Putrajaya will introduce an initiative to require that all funds for political parties be channeled to their official party account, but it is unknown if the initiative was ever implemented.

The prime minister has come under the spotlight after the MACC said in a statement on Monday that the RM2.6 billion in his personal bank account, which was alleged to have come from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, was not channeled from the state-owned fund but was a contribution from “donors” instead.

The MACC, however, did not disclose the identity of the donors nor explain how the money was spent.

Malaysia ranked fifth from the bottom in a recent survey of 54 countries on the integrity of campaign financing in elections, conducted by the Electoral Integrity Project based at the University of Sydney, Australia.

The study noted that reporting requirements for political funding in Malaysia are light, as parties are only required to report on their finances annually and such reports do not disclose a complete list of donors or donations.

Source

MH370: Timeline of one of aviation’s greatest mysteries

Missing MH370

PARIS: Here is a timeline of major developments in the hunt for the Boeing 777, which vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard.

2014

March 8 – MH370 departs from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 am and disappears from Malaysian civilian radar at 1:30 am, just before passing to Vietnamese air traffic control. It appears on military radar until 2:15 am. – Vietnam launches a search operation for the Boeing 777 that expands into a multinational hunt in the South China Sea.

March 15 – Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says the plane seems to have been flown deliberately for hours, veering sharply off-route at roughly the same time that its communications system and transponder were manually switched off. – Satellite data suggest the jet’s last known location is somewhere along one of two huge arcs stretching north into Central Asia and south into the Indian Ocean. Twenty-six countries take part in the search.

March 24 – Najib announces “with deep sadness and regret” that MH370 is presumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.

March 30 – Australia is tasked with coordinating the search with six other nations: China, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States. After some 300 sorties covering more than 4.5 million square kilometres (1.3 million nautical square miles) fail to find evidence, the priority shifts to submarine exploration.

2015
 
January 29 – Malaysia’s government declares the passengers and crew “presumed dead.”

March 8 – As the one-year mark passes, an interim report by an international investigative team details the flight’s sequence of events. No evidence is provided that would incriminate crew members or suggest a mechanical failure. A sudden drop in oxygen levels that could have incapacitated the crew but allowed the plane to continue flying until it ran out of fuel is considered a credible hypothesis.

July 29 – A two-metre-long (almost seven-foot) wing part called a flaperon is found on a beach on the French island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean. Two days later, Australian officials say they are “increasingly confident” the part came from the ill-fated airliner. It is sent to a French military site near Toulouse for detailed examination.

August 2 - Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai says that the part has been “officially identified” as coming from a Boeing 777.

August 5 - Experts and investigators from Malaysia, China, Australia, France and the United States begin examining the wing part, hoping to officially confirm it was once part of MH370. -AFP

August 6 - International experts have confirmed that the debris found on La Reunion Island on July 29, belongs to MH370.

Source

Cristiano Ronaldo Homeless Prank - (Official Video) - #LIVELIFELOUD